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ABSTRACT
In the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber demonstrates his mastery in many different fields. However, Weber acknowledged that he was no expert in theology and he admitted that he had relied on a number of theological sources for his treatment of Calvin. Unfortunately, an examination of his sources reveals that Weber was highly selective. He not only chose what he wanted to use; he also dismissed those theologians whose ideas did not seem to fit his interpretation. Weber did not provide us with an account of Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination as it was, but he gave us one as he wanted it to be.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. I use the version of the Protestant Ethic found in the 1904 and 1905 volumes of the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik because it represents Weber’s early view of the thesis rather than the later revised version as found in the Religionssoziologie. There he attempts to incorporate the Protestant Ethic into his other writings devoted to setting out the importance of rationality in world religions. Weber’s pagination is given both in the still useful edition of Lichtblau and Weiß and the recent edition of the first edition of the Protestant Ethic in the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe (Weber Citation1996, Citation2014).
2. Graf is indeed partially correct in that Weber relied upon a number of theologians, but as I will argue, Weber was rather selective in using them.
3. Franz Wilhelm Kampschulte (1831–1872) was a professor at Bonn and the work was Calvin. Seine Kirche und sein Staat. Kampschulte’s book is both a political and a historical work. He does not begin to discuss Calvin until page 224 and his historical treatment of Calvin’s Institutes covers 27 pages. Kampschulte (Citation1869, 262–265, 274–275) spends a total of six pages to setting out an evaluation of Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination. In a speech given in 1909, the eminent Church historian, Holl (Citation1928, 270), complained that Kampschulte’s Catholic point of view clouded his scholarly work, including his work on Calvin. In contrast, Holl (Citation1928, 181) thought that Weber’s Protestant Ethic was ‘brilliant.’ Marcks’ treatment of Calvin is found in his biography of Gaspard de Coligny.
4. This is not simply an issue of selection. Weber, like his friend Heinrich Rickert, understood the importance of selection when forming both historical concepts as well as composing historical accounts.
5. Not only did German Lutheran theologians write on this topic, but also a number of Swiss Reformed theologians. Furthermore, there were several Germans and Swiss who taught both in Switzerland and in Germany. This list includes the Germans Schneckenburger and Hundeshagen and the Swiss Daniel Schenkel and Alexander Schweizer. To give one example of the intensity of this conflict, the volume of the Theologische Studien und Kritiken for 1856 has over 400 pages devoted to this issue and includes works on Schenkel and Julius Müller, by Müller, Issac August Dorner, and Johann Heinrich August Eberhard.
6. Scheibe (Citation1897, 1, 4), Seeberg (Citation1898, 379), Loofs (Citation1906, 792, 875), CitationHeppe ([1861]1958, 140), Müller (Citation1896, 376, Citation1904, 587), Kaftan (Citation1897, 5, 311, 468), and Troeltsch (Citation1906, 453, 354). Weber would have consulted any of the first three editions of Loofs’ book and he would certainly have known about Troeltsch’s use of Schweizer because of their close friendship as well as Weber’s reliance on Troeltsch’s theological expertise. In the first part of his review article, Schneckenburger (Citation1847) praised Schweizer for his courageousness, learnedness, and talent (947, 983).
7. The treatment of Weber’s responses to Ritschl’s work would warrant a separate paper. Suffice it to say that Weber’s condemnation of him is not warranted. Ritschl was regarded by friends and foes alike as the leading German theologian of the second half of the nineteenth century. For confirmation, see Adolf Harnack’s high praise for him in Harnack Citation[1897]1904).
8. I am unable to locate passages in Ritschl’s book that would lend themselves to Weber’s interpretation. However, Ritschl does offer something similar in his three-part article on Geschichte Studien zur christlichen Lehre von Gott.
9. ‘Predestined’ and ‘foreordained’ are in English.
10. Weber claimed that Calvin was certain that he had been chosen and thus was a member of the Invisible Church (Weber Citation1996, 69; Citation2014, 272). However, Scheel (Citation1913, 1705) maintained that ‘Calvin himself revealed that he was uncertain’ of his standing. Scheel’s article on ‘Prädestination’ is in both the first and second editions of Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. It is interesting to note that the best treatment of the ‘Invisible Church’ was an article by Ritschl, but Weber does not mention it. He may not have known of its original publication in the 1859 volume of Theologische Studien und Kritiken but it was reprinted in the first series of Ritschl’s Gesammelte Aufsätze, (Ritschl Citation1859, Citation1893) which Weber does cite.
11. ‘illusionlosen und pessimistisch gefärbten Individualismus.’
12. Hundehagen also was called to Bern where he and Schneckenburger became colleagues and close friends. It was because of Hundeshagen’s efforts that Schneckenburger’s work was posthumously published.
13. When I was seeking the book at the Heidelberg University, I was told that Volume Two was lost. However, as I examined Volume One I, discovered that Volumes One and Two were actually bound together.
14. In his review of Schneckenburger’s Vorlesungen über neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte, Ritschl (Citation1864, 384–386) made some similar observations. Even Hundeshagen (Citation1906) noted the defects in his friend’s work.
15. In his comparative symbolic, Müller (Citation1896, 445) maintained that the central thought of Calvin’s theology was honouring God.
16. Scheibe’s (Citation1897, 124) own conclusion is that Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination is connected to the Protestant doctrine of salvation and the question of personal salvation.
17. B.A. Gerrish (Citation2004) writes: ‘Scholarly tabulation has shown that in the Opera Omnia (OC) Calvin’s explicit references to the early church fathers number more than 3,200; some 1,700 of them are references, often with extended quotations, to Augustine.’ The numbers are greatly increased when echoes and allusions are taken into account. Weber (Citation1996, 90, note 145) also recognised the complexities and difficulties in connecting Calvin and other Protestants to Catholic doctrines and practices.
18. Schneckenburger (Citation1855, I: 75) writes: the good works are necessary for the securing of salvation. (die Gute Werke sind nothwendig zur Erlangung der Seligkeit.)
19. ‘Ich will selig sein, darum muss ich so handeln, dass ich es werde’ (Schneckenburger Citation1855, I: 98).
20. Weber (Citation1996, 60, note 73; Citation2014 256, note 9) refers to Ritschl’s Geschichte des Pietismus and Köstlin’s article in the Realencyklopädie on ‘Gott’. See (Ritschl Citation1880, 1: 61–66 and Köstlin Citation1899, 781, 785, 190). However, Ritschl rejects the conception of the ‘Wilful God’ (Scheibe Citation1897, 115).
21. This term poses translation difficulties. While Volk is ‘people,’ ‘Lehre’ can be rendered by either ‘doctrine’ or ‘teaching.’ Weber would likely stress the former whereas Hundeshagen would probably emphasise the latter.
22. For Weber’s conception of asceticism, see Adair-Toteff (Citation2015, 55–82) and Adair-Toteff (Citation2016a, 61–78).
23. Marianne has also been accused of offering a highly selective and a rather positive image of her husband. Here, she is maintaining that Weber adhered to an ‘ethics of conviction’ rather than an ‘ethics of responsibility.’ However, Weber was more drawn to the latter than to the former. For the theological context of both types of ethics, see Adair-Toteff (Citation2016b).
24. Thus, Harnack wrote that Ritschl’s fight against Pietism was nothing other than the fight against Catholicism and that he fought so energetically because the whole of Protestantism was in play (Harnack Citation[1897]1904, 353).
25. Why Weber did this is not the issue here. The answer to that would involve delving into Weber’s psychological makeup. What can be eliminated is any claim that Weber sought to avoid confrontation, because he often welcomed it. And we know from Karl Jaspers that Weber was not averse to admit to making mistakes. Perhaps one of the reasons why Troeltsch began to write more on Luther and Calvin after the initial publication of the Protestant Ethic was to offer a corrective to Weber’s rather one-sided view. That issue is clearly beyond the scope of this essay.